Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - The Gateway Arch - November 2021

The last stop on our road trip was the Gateway Arch and National Park. 🌲 I've never visited but Wes did when he was a child. He says he doesn't remember much so it was sort of like he was seeing it for the first time with me. We bought a day pass for parking downtown and thought there would be enough to do to fill a day but downtown St. Louis wasn't as touristy as I initially thought. Ok... I take that back, there were a ton of "family fun" attractions, and the Cardinals stadium was a big deal, but I don't like baseball or children. LOL 

We did walk around City Garden, which I really enjoyed. It is a large sculpture park in the middle of downtown. It was a little strange because it was all office buildings, parking garages, apartments and then .... gigantic pieces of art. The roads around it were blocked off so visitors could walk freely. There was a coffee shop that we really wanted to go to in the center of City Garden but it was temporarily closed. 😞 We strolled along the garden and saw all of the sculptures except for the 2 LED ones that weren't turned on in the daytime. My favorite was the two white rabbits (named Untitled) and Wes liked the thimble bench (don't remember what it is called).

We wandered around downtown a bit on our way to the Gateway Arch. Nothing too exciting. We wanted to eat at Carmine's Steak House last minute but we were severely underdressed and didn't have reservations. (And I'm not even sure if we were hungry. LOL Wes just said he's read good things about that restaurant and wanted to check it out). I wanted to see the Old Cathedral but there were tons of cars in the parking lot. Normally not a problem but there were also signs posted stating that the parking lot was for church goers only. Since the parking lot was full, I assumed it was time for mass and I didn't want to interrupt. So, we decided that we would come back after our tour of the arch. Turns out all of the cars were driven by sinners because I looked up mass times on the cathedral's website and mass was already celebrated at 7:30am that morning. The cathedral's website also told me that it closed early and we wouldn't be able to see if after our tour. 😔

When we were walking around the park, I chattered on about how this was the first National Park we've visited together. Wes kept giving me a weird look and I literally just now realized that we went to Carlsbad Caverns AND the Grand Canyon (albeit briefly) on our wedding road trip. 😬 Ooops... this is the third National Park we've visited together. I have the worst memory nowadays. This is why I must keep extensive journals/blogs about our vacations! 

The National Park was pretty but not the most interesting (or large). We walked along the Mississippi River--which was cool but I think driving over it on the Illinois bridge was much more breathtaking... but that could have just been the architecture of the bridge--, both the North & South lawns, and everything else that was on the map. It was all beautifully landscaped and it was a nice sunny day for walking around (but too sunny for pictures, Wes said; he's always looking for a way to get out of selfies with me!) We still had time to kill before our tour of the Gateway Arch but we had done and seen everything in the National Park, so we decided to head in early. I bought tickets for us to take a tram ride to the top of the arch on the North Tram at 3:20pm. I thought maybe they could fit us on an earlier tram if we showed up early and no one else had bought tickets. We walked to the screens showing all the rides & times and it showed that the North Tram was closed today. 😳 I asked the ticket counter about it and the guy said that they randomly close one of the trams, which is completely normal, and he'll just put us on the South Tram. Rides for the South Tram go at 3:15pm or 3:25pm and we could just pick whichever one we wanted. He must be used to panicked tourists because he was super causal about it. 

Since we were there early, we chose the 3:15pm ride. When it was our turn in line, the tour guide said there were a bunch of families ahead of us so that time slot filled up already. She would just put us on the 3:25pm one. Then she found out that the 3:25pm ride was booked with a large tour group so we got to go on our own private tram ride... at 3:20pm as originally planned. LOL It was super cool to get to go by ourselves! Our tour guide was really soft-spoken and I couldn't really hear her so I don't have any fun facts about the arch to retell. All I remember is that we sat in a capsule that uses some sort of special geometry to keep it upright as we rode up the arch, and it sways a bit. There were two tour guides at the observation deck and they were pretty shocked when only two people came out of the ride. One of them was like, well, do you have any questions? We said that we just wanted to look at the view and he seemed relieved that he could take a break from repeating his presentation for the one millionth time that day.

The view was amazing. And it was great that we could walk around and take our time without other tourists around. We could see what seemed like all of St. Louis. The Mississippi River on the other side wasn't as spectacular but still pretty. I sort of feel like we wasted a day aimlessly meandering around downtown and the National Park but the arch was definitely worth the trip.